YourStride - our story

Our story

Our founders, Adi and Ewan, are passionate about helping people be more independent, confident and free.

They have been designing award winning technology for social good for over 8 years and were even awarded the coveted Forbes 30 under 30 award (in the same year as Adele and Malala) for their work building technology that older people love - even the Queen had used their products!

Over the years, they experienced first hand how much people disliked their pendant alarms but were forced into choosing them for lack of a better alternative. Adi and Ewan decided to dig deeper into this to understand the old alarms were limiting and what needed to change. They ran design workshops, group sessions and interviews all over the UK with older people, their friends, families, carers and healthcare professionals. They even did work experience in monitoring centres where they sat in on calls and went out to install the old kit.

People said the red buttons are a big sign saying 'I'm old and vulnerable' so they didn't like wearing them and because they only work at home, they felt trapped and scared to go out. Instead, they wanted an alarm that is:

discreet and doesn't scream 'I have an alarm'
works anywhere; at home, in the garden or out, without limitation
has a speaker and microphone built-in so you don't rely on a box in another room
doesn't need someone to come in and set it up

Our founders spent years prototyping and testing different designs before settling on the YourStride personal alarm that you see today. They found there was so much more detail to designing the perfect alarm than only meeting the requirements above. For example, they worked with occupational therapists that told them the button must be placed on the front so that you can activate the SOS even if you lose function in your other arm during a stroke - a button on the side simply will not do!

This ultimately led to the launch of YourStride (under the name Personal Alarm Watch) in January 2019. Since then, we have gone from strength to strength, quickly becoming the highest rated alarm service in the UK and supporting people from Penzance to the Outer Hebrides. We are helping people to age without limits!

In 2022, Personal Alarm Watch became YourStride. The name change was inspired by customer feedback and to reflect the value our service delivers them. We’d often hear that wearers felt greater independence and freedom, and were getting more from life since joining our service. It’s clear that we are providing more than an emergency alarm and, well, we took that feedback in our stride.